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Stop the Misogyny. Melinda Gates deserves every cent

June 15, 2021
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Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash
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Kiran_Rai

Kiran Rai founded celebrity-endorsed fashion line Sir Alistair Rai. As co-founder of Consciously Unbiased and the CU Project, Rai works to help change the narrative in our culture and empower people.

Bill and Melinda Gates' separation will be the biggest divorce in history. It's shown us that no partnership is unbreakable. It's also reminded us that women such as Melinda Gates are often judged or stigmatized for receiving what they are entitled to - even when it comes to separating from a partner of decades, whose success is built on their support.

Too often, there is the assumption that an ex-wife is getting money that she hasn't really earned. This speaks to a deeper truth about our culture and how we define valuable labor. If we're going to assume, we may assume that she did the majority of the unpaid labor as the CEO of the household and the everyday emotional labor of raising three children. Could Bill have become the man he is, and achieved the success he has, without Melinda? If not, doesn't that make the marital assets as much hers as his?

I hope that Bill not contesting the separation agreement will inspire more of us to see marriage as a true and equal partnership - like an LLC with 50/50 ownership - and for more couples to amicably separate, without the man devaluing what the woman has put into the relationship.

If the term 'gold digger' even fleetingly comes to mind, ask yourself why. She started dating Bill in 1987, when Microsoft's average share price was 0.3413 USD. On the day of the divorce announcement it was 247.8 USD.

Melinda was (and is) a career woman; she only cut it short so she could focus on starting a family. That's why we have the divorce laws we do: to compensate women like Melinda for the lost earnings they would have inevitably enjoyed if it wasn't for the family dynamic where Melinda stayed at home with the kids while Bill toured the world building the business. Their business, even if Melinda wasn't a shareholder.

Melinda's emotional labor in the family enabled Bill to achieve what he has. There are countless couples like Bill and Melinda. Because of their media profile, we know that she is a force of nature in her own right, a competent executive, author, speaker and philanthropist. But most of the world's Melinda's are invisible - even if the results of their work aren't.

In America today, women spend on average 271 minutes per day on unpaid work, compared with 165 for men. If American women earned minimum wage for the unpaid labour work they do around the house, they would have made $1.5 trillion in 2019, and globally they would have made $10.9 trillion.

This work, such as routine housework of cooking, cleaning, shopping, making doctors appointments, refilling the soap dispenser and childcare, is completely invisible to economists. It isn't included in labor statistics, or factored into GDP.

But without that work, society would collapse and you wouldn't produce another male billionaire. We don't need to imagine that; in 1975, 90% of Icelandic women went 'on strike' and did no domestic work.

The result: endless queues for takeaways and children being taken into workplaces by fathers who didn't know how to look after them (especially during board meetings).

In fact, women's domestic strikes like the Icelandic one can have a bigger effect on our lives than regular strikes. Because we live in a patriarchy, we aren't always reminded of this. What we are reminded of is how much a woman is going to 'get' out of a divorce.

What this comes down to is how we view marriage. The individualistic, romantic ideal means that we sometimes see marriage as a transaction between two individuals, two sole proprietorships cutting a deal. In reality (and in legal terms), as soon as we are married, we are entering into an LLC, a limited liability partnership, where each partner has a 50% stake in the partnership's struggles and triumphs, its losses - and its wins.

A marriage is not just a romantic relationship (whatever the genders involved), it is an economic partnership. This is a more traditional approach to relationships, and it's still common in collectivist cultures where compatibility between extended families, lifestyles and life goals are more important to spouse selection than, say, physical attractiveness or 'spark'.

It's a very different approach to the individualistic 'winner-takes-all' view of marriage and divorce that undermines us all, and especially harms women.

Instead of talking about how much Melinda is going to 'get', we should be looking at how much Bill and Melinda's partnership made. And like any equal partnership, we should expect the profits to be divided right down the middle. After all, they earned it - both of them.

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Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases
Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.